WILD by Cheryl Strayed

A lot of my fantasy life is devoted to planning the big adventure... getting in my car in NYC with no itinerary, and driving until I reach Patagonia; hiking the G-7, moving to a cabin on the coast of fill-in-the-blank. Maybe this is in my future, when my kid finishes school and I retire from my steady gig. Meanwhile, I'll content myself with my little adventures--two weeks solo in Cuba; paddling, hiking, busing and training from California to Canada; three weeks of eating my way through Laos and Vietnam; and instead of an endless summer, the endless coffee break--body surfing wherever and whenever I can, in little snippets of free time. And while I dream bigger, I'll read about the folks who dreamed and actually did. Cheryl Strayed hiked the Pacific Coast Trail by herself, and wound up more at peace with herself. Her story is highly entertaining and well-crafted. She writes a good sentence, knows when to show, when to tell, what to put in and what to leave out. A vicarious thrill. Thanks, Cheryl!

WHY BE HAPPY WHEN YOU COULD BE NORMAL? by Jeanette Winterson

On page 64, and about to give up. Loved her early books, got lost and fell away from her later ones. Phillip Lopate advises memoirists "To Show and Tell." This book is all tell, tell, tell... whine, whine, whine. Little bits and pieces that never take flight. Get over how much you hate your mum. We all do our best, and it's never good enough. NYT bestseller. Vogue calls it a tour de force. Bored, recently, by a string of critically acclaimed books. Is it me?

LIFE AFTER LIFE by Kate Atkinson and THE OUTLAW ALBUM by Daniel Woodrell

The literary barometers love Life After Life. Once again, I may be missing something. Here’s the conceit: What if you could keep coming back to life until you got it right? And so the protagonist dies over and over, and comes back again and again, until she does what you pretty much know she’s going to do from early on in the book. It’s very cleverly structured. A neat parlour trick. But the writing is pedestrian.

Daniel Woodrell is the freshest, darkest, most compelling voice I’ve read this year. He’s been around for a while, writing what he’s coined ‘country noir,’ but somehow I missed him until now. These stories, set in the Ozarks, knocked my socks off.

SWIMMING HOME by Deborah Levy

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Man, I must be missing something. Cliché language, cliché plot, cliché characters, drawn so thinly you don't care a wit about them. How many times do you want to read about the beautiful, ethereal, unstable poetess-wanna-be's copper-colored curls that cascade down her back?

THE BONE PEOPLE by Keri Hulme, HOPE: A TRAGEDY by Shalom Auslander, THE CAT'S TABLE by Michael Ondaatje, MYSTIC RIVER by Dennis Lehane, THE LEFTOVERS by Tom Perrotta...more

Derelict in the reading blog department. And now I've lost track of everything I've read since September, except what is still lying around at the foot of my bed. The whole point of this blog is to help me remember what I've read. Dammit, Gumby.

In reverse reading order, calling up what very little remains in the mental sieve, the foot of the bed books are:

THE BONE PEOPLE by Keri Hulme
Possibly the most disturbing novel I've ever read. I am pulled toward dark fiction, but this book--exquisitely written though it is--was so painful I found myself skimming over entire chunks of her poetic, evocative prose, and mining entire sections of her outside-the-lines narrative for plot only, so I could continue on and, um,  get thee behind me, Bone People. Hulme tells the story of of a sprite of a boy who is severely abused by people who nevertheless truly love him. No one comes out smelling good, but you empathize with all of them, and even like them. That's a hard thing to pull off. The book is masterful... but I'm glad I'm finished with it.

HOPE: A TRAGEDY by Shalom Auslander
I'm a fan of Auslander's. And it takes chutzpah to write a dark comedy with Ann Frank as the supporting actress. Problem is that the Frank character is fabulously annoying--intentionally so--and reading about her is kind of annoying, too, and the laughs didn't quite get off the page. The construct is good, the ideas are good, the book isn't my favorite of his.

MYSTIC RIVER by Dennis Lehane
A literary murder mystery, and poignant portrait of three men who were friends as boys. Beautifully done.

THE LEFTOVERS by Tom Perrotta
What sets Perrotta's novels apart from guilty pleasures, is that he can write. His books are compulsively engaging and well-crafted. He's good. I wish I could do what he does. When a new Perrotta comes out, I buy it. And choose it for a plane ride over the more hoity-toity lit I've also packed in my luggage. Does this sound snobbish? Guilty. But not because I'm reading Perrotta's latest. The Leftovers takes on The Rapture in suburbia--smart, funny, meaningful.

Also reread TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, reviewed elsewhere in this blog. Taught it again, read it again. Never get tired of it. Always find myself stopped in my tracks in various places, asking myself, "How does she do that?"

No doubt I've missed an armful of books I've read this fall and winter.

A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING by Dave Eggers

Nope. Not this time. Loved A HEARTBREAKING WORK..., WHAT IS THE WHAT. Liked ZEITOUN a lot. Am a fan of Eggers. But this one is a snoozer. Protagonist is in Saudi Arabia to pitch his IT company's services to the king. Each day he travels from Jeddah to a Pie-in the-Sky, partially built city of the future nearby, to make his presentation. Each day the king is a no-show. Wash, rinse, repeat, yawn. Like Groundhog Day, but not funny.

THE POLYSYLLABIC SPREE by Nick Hornby, BROOKLYN by Colm Tóibín, THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE HER by Junot Díaz, LP Colombia, LP Cambodia

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This month’s reading felt very male. XY.

THE POLYSYLLABIC SPREE by Nick Hornby

A year of his columns from The Believer, chronicling a year of reading, and reviews of what he read. Chatty, funny, smart… bibliophilia without the pretension. A pleasure.

BROOKLYN by Colm Tóibín

What a disappointment. This book was recommended by so many people whose reading tastes I respect. Please tell me what I missed. A naïve Irish girl comes to the New World and becomes a New Yorker. Sweet and clear… but pretty much just a melody with no real harmony, undertones or any real surprises.

THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE HER by Junot Díaz

Well, he’s got his voice back. I loved Drown, fell right into Díaz’ smartass characters and his smartass language. Waited for a follow-up, but Oscar Wao didn’t do it for me. The writing felt self-conscious, and I didn’t buy the teenage characters. (Job hazard for a middle school teacher?) This is How You Lose Her felt authentic, again. And I was hooked on getting a peek at the ‘sucio’s’ side. The writing in parts of this story collection is a little too True Confessions-esque, but most of it is raw and magnetic.

Lonely Planet Colombia

Lonely Planet Cambodia

Where to next?